Books

Virginity Loss Reflections Reveal Changing Times

By Kimberley A. Johnson and Ann Werner

WeNews guest authors

Sunday, February 10, 2013

What was it like to lose your virginity? Kimberley A. Johnson and Ann Werner asked 72 people this question in their book "The Virgin Diaries." In this excerpt, a 77-year-old recalls how things were different for women back then.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Female: I am 77 now. I was 15 years old.

I had no expectations growing up, we didn't calculate it the way we do today. It just happened. He was my love for three years, he was also 15. We were going to get married but he became ill and his mother didn't want us to get married--it was a whole big thing.

Advice from parents? Are you kidding? You must be kidding. Those were the days when you had to sneak around and you didn't let your girlfriends know and then you found out later they were doing the same thing with their boyfriends and it was always with a boyfriend. Not just indiscriminately sleeping around the way they do today. The two of us, it just came naturally, we learned together.

I didn't discuss it with my friends. I knew more than anybody, always; not because I'd been experienced but because I had an open dialogue with my mother. I wasn't living with her but I could talk with her about anything. I knew what was going on in the world. The only rumor I heard was that if you thought you might be pregnant you could shake up a bottle of cola and insert it and that might abort a baby. Or start an abortion.

It took place in my home. It wasn't like today when you watch movies and they say "tonight's the night." I mean, that's so calculated. We cared for one another, we were young and that was it. We used a condom. Those were the things that you couldn't go in a store and buy. He got the condoms. I didn't ask him how.

Natural and Nice

It was very natural. It was very nice. I wanted to do it again. Afterward, I felt very nice, we snuggled, you know. I felt very happy, very content, just very close. We were both children of divorce so it gave us both kind of an anchor.

I didn't tell anyone about it afterward.

I still know him.

Looking back, it was very sweet and a very important part of my life because I had somebody to hold, to be with. I was relatively insecure in myself. It just made me feel so close to somebody and that I needed to be a part of somebody's life. That's what it did. We had boyfriends then, we didn't have parties where people switched partners and it was just different. You went steady and eventually you had sex. You loved each other, whether it was real love or not. It was something you did to be close.

My advice to virgins would be first of all, know what you're doing. Be of an age, at least 15 or 16, and be sure that you really care for the boy and you don't want to just experiment with the act.

Kimberley A. Johnson is a women's rights activist and is currently working on a book for young women emphasizing the importance of voting and women's roles in the feminist movement. She was a speaker at the We Are Womanmarch in Washington, D.C., and writes for the political blog, Liberals Unite. Ann Werner is a former actor turned writer. She is the author of three novels and has produced two non-fiction books with her daughter and business partner, Kimberley Johnson. She is currently working on her fourth novel and is a contributor to the blog sites Liberals Unite and Restoring Sanity.